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Pinky and the Brain are cartoon characters from the animated television series Animaniacs, who became popular enough to warrant their own animated spinoff called Steven Spielberg Presents Pinky and the Brain. Still later they appeared in Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain, 65 episodes produced by Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. Animation, and aired from 1995 to 1998 on The WB Television Network.
Pinky and Brain are genetically enhanced lab mice who reside in a cage in the Acme Labs research facility. Each week sees Brain come up with a new plan for the two (led by him) to take over the world, which ultimately ends in failure. In common with many other Animaniacs shorts, many episodes are in some way a parody of something else—usually a film. The cartoon's famous tagline is:
Pinky: "Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"
The Brain: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky - Try to take over the world!"
Although they plan to conquer the earth, there isn't a lot of antagonism seen in them, and in a Christmas special Pinky even wrote to Santa that Brain had the world's best interests at heart. This is reinforced by Brain's promises that he will provide more funding for law enforcement and the like.
The series won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class—Animated Program in 1996.
The Brain bears a resemblance to Orson Welles, particularly in his vocal characteristics (voiced by Maurice LaMarche). LaMarche won an Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Male Performer in an Animated Television Program Production for this role in 1998. Series producer Tom Ruegger initially based Brain on a caricature of WB animation staffer Tom Minton, a long-time cartoonist. The Welles connection comes from LaMarche, who is a big fan of the actor/director. LaMarche describes Brain's voice as "65% Orson Welles, 35% Vincent Price". Brain is highly intelligent and develops Rube Goldberg plans for global domination. His tail is bent like a staircase (which he often uses to pick the lock of the cage), and his head is large and wide, supposedly housing his abnormally large brain. He appears to be coldly unemotional and speaks in a deadpan manner. Nevertheless, Brain has a very subtle sense of humor, and has even fallen in love once, with Billie (voiced by Tress MacNeille), an initially rather dippy girl mouse with a Queens accent (perhaps based on the Citizen Kane character Susan Alexander, in another Welles connection). Later, Billie became even more brilliant than Brain, but showed no interest in either him or the idea of planetary conquest. Intellectually, Brain sees his inevitable rise to power as beneficial to the world rather than mere megalomania. In one episode, when Brain finds himself under the influence of hypnosis by a psychologist he had planned to manipulate for one of his schemes, it is revealed that Brain lived in a can with his parents when he was young. The researchers took him from his home, and the last he saw of it was a picture of the world on the side of the can. The psychologist speculates that Brain's hunger to take over the world stems from needing to get his world back.
The characteristics of Brain would lead one to believe that he is more suited to be an antagonist rather than a protagonist (in fact, he was a major boss character in both the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo versions of the ''Animaniacs'' video game), but the series tends to present him as a quixotic fellow striving for greatness against the odds, evoking sympathy from the audience and causing viewers to like him, despite his seemingly evil plans for world domination. Such a thing is typical of an anti-hero, which many consider Brain to be. The absurdity of a normally insignificant creature hungering for world dominance adds to the comical effect, and one senses a Napoleon complex within him, despite the gravitas of his Wellesian diction — highlighted when other characters inadvertently become as smart as or smarter than he. Unfortunately for the Brain, his schemes are inevitably doomed to failure by reason of one or more of a few common mishaps: Pinky doing something idiotic to ruin the plan, Brain gravely under/overestimating the masses' intelligence, or, simply, bad luck. In many of Brain's plans, he plainly says to one of the people he is trying to fool that he is actually a genetically altered lab mouse bent on world domination, but the person usually takes it as a joke. That habit has been the reason one of his plans failed. A possible reason he keeps doing this is that he is testing the humans' intelligence. Brain is more compassionate than many give him credit for: he rarely seeks to do anybody direct harm, and in many episodes he rescues Pinky and other mice from being killed, and defends the world from those who seek world domination for their own evil ends, and Brain has stated that he wanted to take over the world in order to make it a better place, after saving the world from his evil arch-rival, Snowball the Hamster.
Brain's similarity to Orson Welles was made explicit in the Animaniacs episode "Yes, Always", which was based upon an outtake from one of Welles' television commercials, colloquially known as Frozen Peas, in which he ranted about the poor quality of the script. This cartoon was described by writer Peter Hastings as "a $250,000 inside joke": LaMarche used excerpts from it as sound check material, and Hastings took it to its logical conclusion. Strengthening the Welles connection was an episode in which Brain took on the mind-clouding powers of a radio character called "The Fog": a parody of The Shadow, a popular radio character for which Welles once provided the voice. Other episodes alluding to Welles included an episode entitled "The Third Mouse," a parody of The Third Man in which the Brain played the part of Welles' character Harry Lime (with Pinky as Holly Martins), and an episode, "Battle for the Planet," in which Brain, inspired by Welles' infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast and the hysteria it provoked, stages an alien invasion on television, believing that this will cause humanity to erupt in mass panic, allowing him to seize power.
A breakdown of the Brain's voice:
Pinky (voiced by Rob Paulsen) is another genetically modified mouse who shares the same cage at Acme Labs but is substantially less bright. He speaks with an exaggerated Cockney English accent. He frequently says nonsensical interjections such as "narf", "zort","poit", and "troz" (the last of which Pinky started saying after noticing it was "'zort' in the mirror"). He also used "fjord" and "gnurf" on unique occasions, and "natch" in an episode set in the film noir era, as well as "hark" in an episode that was partially set in the medieval ages. Rob Paulsen won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for this role in 1999. Senior producer Tom Ruegger based Pinky on former Tiny Toon Adventures writer and director Eddie Fitzgerald (who has also worked on Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures and Ren and Stimpy) who is said to have constantly said "Narf" and "Egad" around the Tiny Toons production office. Series producer Peter Hastings described Eddie by saying, "He always greeted you like you were wearing a funny hat - and he liked it."
Although Pinky is also an albino lab mouse like the Brain, he has a straighter tail, a severe overbite, and is taller than the Brain. Pinky is more open-minded than the Brain (evidenced best, perhaps, by his crush on a similar-looking horse named Phar Fig Newton), and much more up-beat. He doesn't let troubles ruin his day, mostly because he's too scatter-brained to notice them. Pinky also works with Brain despite the fact that Brain insults him constantly and often beats him over the head. However, Pinky actually seems to enjoy this, laughing after every hit. Pinky is just happy spending time with his best friend.
Pinky has a number of unusual special abilities, something like 'magic' but caused by his genetic engineering. Most notably, he occasionally levitates, but also has been known to come up with incredible insights on the scale that one would expect from Brain, contrasting with his otherwise stupid appearance. This was also demonstrated in another episode where we get a 'Pinky-Vision' of one of the typical night's activities (i.e. taking over the world), and discover that Pinky is in fact extremely intelligent, but in a totally different way to what was expected — he in fact has a great imagination coupled to a very highly developed level of extrapolation. His seemingly random statements actually arise from an observation, tempered by a whimsical imagination, which then are extrapolated to an absurd conclusion. For instance, on seeing the Brain in a distorting mirror, imagines him fatter, and then 'what if the Brain looked like a Hippopotamus?' leads to thoughts about the "unmentionables" a Hippopotamus would wear, and finally the utterance — 'Yes Brain, but what if the Hippopotamus won't wear the thong?' Pinky also tends to take things very literally, as seen by his response when Brain ends a sentence with; "...and there the genius lies!" Pinky responds, "Having a nap is he?"
Another example of his hidden intelligence was shown when the two mice were placed into an elaborate maze by a group of scientists. One particular obstacle which the pair had to overcome was a holographic projector which would tempt them by showing them whatever they most desired, initially showing them the piece of cheese which marked the exit. Pinky amazed the Brain by approaching the device, against the Brain's advice, at which point the hologram displayed a complete map of the maze as Pinky's most pressing desire was to wish for a map that would lead them to the maze's exit.
The viewer might consider that Brain should be frustrated by the success that could have been possible if he'd listened to or asked Pinky about the situation and/or plan, but Brain rarely shows anything more than a confused or sarcastic face and sometimes a comment, and usually near the end of the episode.
In "Pinky's Turn", Pinky had much of the episode centering around himself wherein he took on some of Brain's motivation for taking over the world. This episode has Pinky becoming extremely successful at ruling at least a town, but of course the whole thing is put through the wringer of Pinky's 'clockwork orange' view of things, hence Pinky's choice of naming the town: "I think I'll call it 'Shiny Pants', because everyone in there will want to wear shiny pants..." and goes on to describe his ultimate goal and the path to get there. Seeing Pinky's unexpected success, Brain is understood to wonder questions similar to many that have been asked for centuries: "Why do people with such capacity for power seem to waste it on crazy things that work out somehow, but shouldn't?"
In one episode, Pinky addressed a group of world leaders, lauding Brain's talents and intelligence to them, and convincing them to give Brain control of their countries. Brain, who was very upset at the time, repulsed the leaders with his anger and rudeness, leading them to rescind their offer. A mortified Brain later realized that Pinky had delivered the world to him on a silver platter, and he himself scuttled the deal. The supreme irony is that the apparently stupid Pinky nearly took over the world using honest and open discussion and talk, as opposed to the overly complicated and Machiavellian strategies Brain himself typically uses, and that Brain himself prevented the conquest from taking place. Pinky has a great heart, and he always tries to agree with Brain, until he's placed in a situation where he has power, and realizes that Brain's plans are morally wrong. At these times Brain is usually left in danger with Pinky coming to his rescue at the expense of his power. In "The Pink Candidate" Pinky ends up as the President of the United States with only minor help from Brain, and gave up his position of power to save Brain from being "Stoned" by the Senators.
Brain often asks Pinky about famous people when needed, for example when a basketball player was receiving attention, Brain asks why, which concludes in him using basketball to attempt to take over the world. The reason for Pinky's knowing so much about famous people is because he, according to Brain, "watch[es] too much TV," while Brain himself is usually too preoccupied with his plans of world domination to do so.
In an episode surrounding the origin of their receiving their intelligence, it is revealed that it was actually Pinky's idea for Brain to attempt to take over the world, after Brain's first-ever plan (trying to show his intelligence in order to receive a high position within the lab where they were genetically modified) fails.
A recurring character in the series is Snowball the Hamster, Brain's former friend (voiced by Roddy McDowall). The two were both subjected to genetic splicing, and thus both became super-intelligent. Snowball builds a gigantic robotic body (similar to the Brain's robotic body, except Snowball's robot body has a mask), Bill Grates (a play on Bill Gates), and takes control of Microsponge (a take-off of Microsoft). Snowball uses Microsponge to buy 51 percent of the world and its institutions, and thus, to Brain's limitless horror, Snowball actually succeeds in taking over the world. Brain retaliates by reactivating his own robot body, and fights Snowball. In the process, Snowball's robot body, i.e. Bill Grates, explodes, resulting in the downfall of Microsponge and the end of Snowball's reign.
It has been speculated that Snowball is a direct allusion to George Orwell's character in Animal Farm.
While Brain's wish to rule the world is more or less benign (he seems to think he can run the world better than it currently is), Snowball's desire to rule the world is inherently evil and if he were to gain long-lasting dominion over the planet, he would probably destroy it. When Brain derailed Snowball's attempt to take over the world via the Microsponge plan, Brain actually considered this "saving" the world.
Snowball is also truly notable in that he is the only Warner Bros. cartoon character to be permanently "killed off" onscreen; during the series finale "Brainwashed", he accidentally runs through the mutation machine, causing him to lose his own intelligence.
Brain has had many, many plans to take over the world. Following are just some of them.
Pinky: What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?<br>Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky.<br>Pinky: What's that?<br>Brain: ...I have no idea.<br>Pinky: Poit.<br>Brain: Narf.
A few rare episodes involve no attempt on the Brain's part to take over the world. One centers on his rival Snowball's plan (see above) to take over the world using Microsponge. Another episode features Brain's single day where he tries to do anything but take over the world, but in the end, a group of a people vote that he should take over the world on the one day he is not wanting to.
The following exchange occurs in all but one episode:
Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?<br>Pinky: I think so, Brain, but... (The exception to the rule occurs in the episode "Pavlov's Mice", where Brain uses "thinking" in place of "pondering".) (In the Movie Wakko's Wish, which included Pinky and the Brain, there is an extra word. "Pinky, are you pondering exactly what I'm pondering?") The ellipsis is filled in each time with a unique non-sequitur such as, "we're already naked," "isn't a cucumber that small called a gherkin?" or "but if they called them sad meals kids wouldn't buy them." The result is always utterly nonsensical in the context given, indicating that Pinky was in no way pondering what Brain was pondering. Often this resulted in a quip from Brain, like 'the fact that your mind is not clouded by medication only fills me with pity.' In one episode, the viewer sees from Pinky's perspective and witnesses his train of thought as Brain speaks to him. The picture begins as Brain and his speech, but the dialogue fades out and the picture morphs into a whimsical fantasy. When Brain asks Pinky the usual question, Pinky responds with a query regarding the last thing he saw.
In the episode "Napoleon Brainaparte," Pinky's non-sequitur actually refers to an exchange earlier in the episode. As Pinky and Brain are riding through the streets of Paris they pass the Louvre, and Pinky remarks that they should build a giant glass pyramid in the courtyard, to which Brain sarcastically replies "Yes, and then they'll send the London Bridge to America." Later, when Brain asks Pinky "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" Pinky replies "I think so Brain, but then they'd have to take the bridge apart and send it over in pieces."
In one rare instance, Brain's ponderance ("We shall disguise ourselves as a cow!") was exactly what Pinky was pondering, except Pinky ironically thought the ponderance too stupid to voice.
In the episode "Brain Food", Pinky finally admits that he almost never is pondering what Brain is pondering. Ironically, it turns out that Brain was thinking that exact same thing.
Another rare instance occurred in the episode "That Smarts", in which Brain uses a device to increase Pinky's intelligence. Brain asks Pinky, "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" and Pinky, now being a genius, responds, "Yes, I am."
Pinky and the Brain originally appeared as a segment on Animaniacs, another show produced by Steven Spielberg and shown on first Fox and then the WB. On September 1, 1995, Pinky and the Brain were spun off into their own half-hour series, each consisting of one or more segments, including some of the segments from Animaniacs. Initially, the show was scheduled in a prime-time slot, and as a result, tended to have more jokes and humor aimed to adults rather than children. However, due to poor ratings, it was later moved to Saturday mornings as part of the Kids' WB programming block.
On September 1, 1998, the series was retooled into Pinky, Elmyra, and the Brain, in which Pinky and the Brain were owned by Tiny Toons character Elmyra Duff. The show lasted for 13 episodes, 5 of which were shown whole and 6 of which were chopped into segments and aired as part of The Cat&Birdy Warneroonie PinkyBrainy Big Cartoonie Show. All 13 episodes were shown in their original format as part of CITV in the UK during 2001.
After the show was canceled from the Kids WB, Cartoon Network aired it from 1998 to 2000. Nickelodeon acquired syndication rights to broadcast Pinky and the Brain when it was still running in 1996 on Nickelodeon and later Nicktoons Network. While the episodes aired unchanged, Nickelodeon altered the opening sequence, masking various items such as beakers with the orange Nickelodeon logo in the same shape and the Acme Labs sign changing into a Nickelodeon logo. During 2003, Pinky and the Brain aired on Boomerang with the theme song unaltered. It continued to air on Boomerang and Nicktoons Network until 2005 when they were taken off both channels and has not aired on television since.
Pinky and the Brain episodes are now available on the WB's on-demand video service, In2TV.
Five VHS collections of Pinky and the Brain episodes were released from 1993 to 1995, each with approximately 4 episodes:
Volume 1 of Pinky and the Brain was released on DVD on July 25, 2006. The second volume of Pinky and the Brain was released on DVD on December 5, 2006 [1]. Volume 3, which contains the final 22 episodes of the series, will be released on June 19, 2007. [2]
Pinky and the Brain were also regulars in the Animaniacs comic book published by DC Comics. From July 1996 through November 1998, they starred in their own comic book also published by DC Comics, which ran for 27 issues before cancellation. Following the cancellation of the Pinky and the Brain comic, the mice later starred in stories that took up half of the later Animaniacs issues, which, starting at issue #43, was retitled Animaniacs featuring Pinky and the Brain.
There has been one computer game dedicated to Pinky and the Brain, called Pinky and the Brain: World Conquest for the PC, produced by SouthPeak Interactive and distributed by Warner Bros. However, the characters have appeared in several of the Animaniacs games, such as Animaniacs: The Great Edgar Hunt.
While Pinky and the Brain does not feature as many songs as Animaniacs, some of the music from the show can be found across the three Animaniacs CDs. An expanded version of the episode "Bubba Bo Bob Brain" presented in a radio drama or audiobook fashion was released as a CD in 1997 by Rhino Entertainment. As was "Animaniacs", Pinky and the Brain was scored primarily by Richard Stone, with assistance from Steve and Julie Bernstein who also orchestrated and sometimes conducted the 40-piece orchestra. The recordings were done on Stage A on the Warner Bros lot, the same stage (and with the same piano) where Carl Stalling recorded his Looney Tunes music. Countless other Warner Bros. films have also been recorded on that stage. After Richard Stone's death in 2001, at the age of 47, a memorial service was held on this very stage.
The musical score for Pinky and the Brain will frequently contain veiled musical references--for example, in the episode where the Brain builds a new Papier-mâché Earth, the theme from the 2nd and 4th movements of Dvorak's 'New World Symphony' can be heard throughout the episode. The episode "Napoleon Brainaparte" makes frequent reference to the French anthem, La Marseillaise.